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To improve the efficiency of scanning systems and digital copiers, it is desirable to produce a single scanned image composed of several separate objects (e.g., photographs) laid side by side, but preferably not touching, on the platen of the input scanner. To facilitate automated editing of the objects, it is necessary to identify the position, shape and rotation angle of each object. Such a capability can enhance productivity by decreasing the time required for scanning multiple objects and by automating rudimentary editing operations.
The present invention is directed to a system intended to accomplish the automatic determination of independent regions or segments for objects within a scanned image. The invention further provides a user interface and document templates to facilitate the automatic placement of the plurality of objects at positions within a digital document so that the document may be rendered, stored or transmitted. Thus, the present invention combines a number of graphics and image processing techniques into an automated, user-friendly application for productivity enhancement. The application can enhance productivity by decreasing the time required for scanning multiple images, by automating corrections for alignment of multiple images, and even automatically placing multiple images in the document template.
The present invention accomplishes these objectives by:
1) locating a plurality of independent objects within the image
2) modeling the shape of the identified objects (e.g., rectangle)
3) creating a structured image description identifying the location, shape and orientation of each object within the image.
Heretofore, a number of patents and publications have disclosed image segmentation and structured images, the relevant portions of which may be briefly summarized as follows:
U.S. Pat. No. 5,485,568 to Venable et al., issued Jan. 16, 1996, and hereby incorporated by reference, discloses a method and apparatus for representing a complex color raster image as a collection of objects in a structured image formatxe2x80x94a hierarchical, device-independent format. A structured image document, generated using the techniques described by Venable, is a representation of data that may be rendered into a raster image. The data includes simple raster images as well as a hierarchical collection of sub-objects and raster processing operations. The possible data types for objects in the structured image include a raster image, text, graphics, image processing description, and files containing multiple image representations
In xe2x80x9cMANAGING AND REPRESENTING IMAGE WORKFLOW IN PREPRESS APPLICATIONSxe2x80x9d, Technical Association of the Graphic Arts (TAGA) Vol. 1, 1995 Proceedings pp. 373-385, hereby incorporated by reference for its teachings, Venable et al. teach the use of structured images to manage prepress workflow. An operation such as gang scanning is described as a means for capturing several photographs roughly aligned on a scanner platen.
In accordance with the present invention, there is provided an imaging apparatus, including:
an image input device, said image input device producing a digitized image including representations of each of a plurality of objects imaged by said device;
a programmable computer capable of processing the digitized image, said computer including a first memory for storing at least a portion of the digitized image and program memory for the storage of executable code suitable for causing said computer to execute image processing operations on the digitized image,
said computer, in accordance with preprogrammed instructions, identifying the plurality of objects within the digitized input image, modeling shapes representing boundaries of each of the plurality of objects, and characterizing each of the plurality of objects by parameters including shape, position and orientation; and
said computer automatically composing an output document including a representation of at least one of the plurality of objects.
In accordance with another aspect of the present invention, there is provided A digital copying apparatus, including:
an image input device having a transparent platen, said image input device producing a digitized image including representations of each of a plurality of objects placed on the platen;
a programmable computer capable of controlling the operation of the digital copying apparatus and of processing the digitized image, said computer including a first memory for storing at least a portion of the digitized image and program memory for the storage of executable code suitable for causing said computer to execute image processing operations on the digitized image, said computer, in accordance with preprogrammed instructions, identifying the plurality of objects within the digitized input image, modeling shapes representing boundaries of each of the plurality of objects, and characterizing each of the plurality of objects by parameters including shape, position and orientation, and said computer automatically composing an output document including a representation of at least one of the plurality of objects;
a user interface, said user interface comprising a display to depict the output document and a plurality of user selectable option, wherein said computer further includes preprogrammed instructions to update the display in accordance with a selection of the user selectable options; and
a printing engine to produce, in accordance with the output document, a substrate bearing marks in accordance with representations contained in the output document.
One aspect of the invention deals with a basic problem in digital image processing, that of identifying plural objects within a digitized image. The solution to this problem is then leveraged so as to enable the automated recognition and placement of objects to compose a digital document. The techniques described herein enable a user to expediently scan a plurality of distinct documents or objects in a single scanning operation, automatically separate those objects by recognizing them as independent objects within the digitized image, and recomposing a digital document using one or more of the recognized objects. Another aspect of the present invention allows for the automatic creation of a structured image representation of the digitized image so that the image objects may be easily extracted and further processed, independently.
The techniques described above are advantageous because they improve the efficiency of a scanning process, allowing multiple original documents to be scanned at one time, as well as the document composition process by recomposing the documents into a single document using a predetermined template. In addition, the techniques allow for automatically characterizing physical attributes (e.g., location, shape and orientation) of the objects without user intervention.